Family ties
by The Awesome Novice Writer
Summary: A one shot of how some families are torn apart by the infection.


He was cold, so very cold. He was like a block of ice that kept on shivering and wouldn't keep still. He had been this way for the past six hours and counting. This wasn't good. Not good at all.

"Dad," he said to me while shivering weakly "I'm cold." As a response to his need, I took off my jacket and placed it on top of his body like a blanket. Now my son had three thin blankets and two jackets on top of him, but my jacket wasn't going to help him much, I knew that much from the other items packed on top of him.

Even though it was autumn, people normally wouldn't be this cold. Sure we didn't have the heating system running in this house, or a fire built, so the house was naturally cold. But the way he was freezing wasn't normal. Even in winter it might not have been so bad, let along autumn.

But this wasn't because it was autumn. He was sick. I didn't need a doctor, or anyone else to tell me that, you could tell just by looking. My son's skin was as pale as a ghost, his eyes were so bloodshot that I wouldn't of been surprised to hear that those blood vessels had blown, his core temperate was well below average, he was bleeding out thick beads of cold sweat from all over his body, and those were only some of the symptoms he was showing.

"Hope this helps son." I told him before giving him a reassuring pat on the head. My son then gave out a dry, painful cough. Then after that one cough he began to cough harder, so hard that it was more like hacking then coughing. It hurt me to see him like this. I wished that there was more that I could do for him.

With that thought, I looked at my son and told him "I'm going to get some more medicine." And with that, I stood up, and walked out of his room before entering the hallway and gently closed his door shut.

"Still sick is he?" I heard a woman's voice ask behind me, concerned for the boy in the room that I had just left.

"Yeah." I told her before turning around to face my wife. "And he's only getting worse." For the past six hours, his condition had gone from bad to worse. His temperature was lower, his coughing was courser, his eyes more bloodshot, everything was just getting worse.

The look in my wife's eyes as she heard that her youngest son wasn't getting any better was painful for me to even look at. We both felt the same way about him, we wanted him to just get better.

"You think that he's-" She started.

"No," I interrupted her question. I already knew what she was going to say, so I answered. "No, he's not infected. If he were infected, it would have happened at least a month ago." That's when it all started. That's when everything started to go to hell. "And he hasn't been bitten or anything, so no, he can't be infected."

My wife just noded her head before turning around and walking away from the room of our sick son. She walked down the hall until she entered the room next to it, the room we were staying in.

I sighed in frustration as I brushed my right hand through my stiff hair. Our son wasn't infected. It was impossible for him to be infected. He didn't get bitten. He hadn't turned when the majority of the population started to get infected by that blasted green flu. He didn't get infected. Period. And that's how it is now, he's just sick with a cold or something.

I went down the hall until I reached the bathroom. I slipped through the door and turned towards the mirror that was hanging to the right of the entrance. Mirrors were usually fronts for medicine cabinets, so there might be some medicine in this person's house. I hoped there was. I didn't know the owners of this home, but from past experiences, everyone left their medicine usually in the bathroom. They had medicine in other places, but this was the best place to look first. I just hoped that raiders hadn't gotten here first and stolen everything they could get their dirty hands on. My son needed those meds more then any god damn low life addict out there.

I grabbed the dusty edge of the mirror and pulled the cabinet open. Inside where a few bottles of prescription pills, cough syrup, and bandages. Good, raiders hadn't hit this house yet. I grabbed a bottle of cough syrup before closing the cabinet shut.

"There anything I can do around here dad?" I heard another female voice ask. I looked in the mirror to see that my ten year old daughter was behind me. The fact that she had a Glock 17 handgun in a leather holster by her hip was still an uncomfortable sight for me. Ten year old girls shouldn't even be near guns, let along holding one. But now that there are crazy, infected people outside that would think nothing of killing anyone or anything in front of them, she had to have something to protect herself. After all, my wife and I couldn't be everywhere at once. Much as we'd like to be.

Everyone had a weapon now, ever since the military had fallen and the anarchy had begun. Hell, even before the military had fallen and way before the anarchy had started everyone had a weapon on them, most for protection. Others, well, they went crazy in their own ways.

I turned around to face my young daughter, my daughter that should have never seen the world like this, and held out the cough medicine for her.

"This is for your brother," I told her kindly "can you give him some of this?"

"No problem." She told me happily. She just wanted to do something, she was never used to staying indoors too long. But gone were the days where she could run around outside and play soccer or hide and seek all day long.

Victoria grabbed the bottle before turning around and running out of the bathroom towards her brother's room. Our little helper, that's how she used her time now.

We tried to go through the path of least resistance so that only me wife and I would be the ones that would shoot the people that were lost to the infection. But there were times that our kids had to save us, and they had to kill people that were once like us. I knew that it was going to happen eventually, but I still didn't want our kids to be killers. They were still so young, not even teenagers yet, and they were having to do things that we, their parents, the adults, didn't want to even think about.

Victoria and Cain saw things that they should never have seen in their lifetimes. Watching their parents blow the brains out of their neighbors, watching infected civilians burn to death due to molotovs, blowing up a group of military boys as they clustered around a pipe bomb that was attached to a smoke detector beeper and an LED light.

Then there were the times that they had to actually kill some infected beings themselves. At first they were horrified, but now they try to act like its alright.

But I know better. Julia and I both know better. The kids didn't get over, not even after three months. Hell, we haven't gotten over it. The kids have nightmares about those things. They wake up terrified in the middle of the night crying. This was not a life for them to live. No for us. Not for them.

What was our future going to be? Fight and flight? Kill or be killed? That was our present, but what of our future? Would it still be the same? I didn't want to think that it was, but it seemed to be that way. And even if it did end, the kids would never be the same again. It pained me to think that this was their future.

I suddenly heard a loud, high pitched scream come from the hallway. It sounded like Victoria. What had happened? I ran out of the bathroom to see that a long, pink tough that was thicker and longer then humanly possible around Victoria's waist, drag my daughter into Cain's bed room. Damn it! Did a smoker manage to climb up the wall and enter the house? I thought I locked that damn thing!

"Victoria!" I heard my wife shout out in horror as I saw her chase after our daughter as she was being dragged into the room against her will.

I heard Victoria continue to scream as both my girls entered the room, only to then hear Victoria's screams suddenly stop. "Noooo!" I heard my wife scream out.

I ran towards the bedroom as fast as I could and pulled out my .357 magnum out of my leather hip holster. I then heard my wife screaming as I ran down the hallway.

I turned towards the room to see the smoker strangling my wife with it's large tongue before it started to senselessly beat her face to a blood pulp. And not only that, the tiny smoker in the room strangling my wife, was my son.

My son was the smoker. He didn't have all the smoker features, but seeing just the tongue was enough to show that he was a smoker.

I just couldn't believe it. My son, who I thought wasn't infected, was. And now here he was, a nine year old boy, strangling his mom after killing his sister. I just couldn't believe it.

The next thing I knew, the body of my wife hit the ground with a thud. Good god, this can't be happening. It just can't.

I pointed my magnum at my son and shouted

"Don't make me do this son!" My hands were shaking and I knew what must be done. But at the same time, he was my son, and I didn't want to kill him. He had killed his mom and his sister, but I still didn't want to kill him. He was infected, and I still didn't want to kill him.

My son turned towards me. His clothes now stained with the blood of half his family, looked at me with cold, dead eyes. No longer was he the boy that would read quietly in the corner of the house. No longer was the boy that'd go on mountain hikes with me. No longer was this boy going to learn how to play guitar, or live any sort of life after the infection passed. No longer was he alive. He was gone.

I felt my right index finger on the trigger, it was ready to pull at a moment's notice. But I didn't want to pull it. Even though all this had happened, I still didn't want to shoot this thing that was once my son.

The smoker gave out a loud, dry cough before the center of it's head exploded into a splatter of red.

Red dye splattered on the wall behind the smoker a second before the smoker fell to the ground.

Dead.

I then began to feel myself cry as I looked at the other victims in the room. My wife's face was beaten and crushed by the force of something that a nine year old boy shouldn't posses. My daughter's neck had a huge red hole ripped into it. Her blood oozing out of the hole like a broken pipeline. Now a third victim, my son turned smoker, with a hole in his head.

I was sad and angry at the same time. Sad because they all died. Angry because I knew that this was all my fault. My wife wondered if our son was infected and I told her that he wasn't. And yet he was. And because of that, Julia, Victoria, and Cain were all dead.

All because of me.

I pulled the hammer back on the magnum as I thought of all this as my fault.

I placed the magnum into my mouth as I thought of life without my family.

I pulled the trigger.


End file.
